Step 4: The stem

Step 5: Give the rose to someone nice :)

There are tons of occasions where you could give these, I use them mostly instead of cards because I always thought it a bit weird to give a card to s...

Some time ago I wanted to make some fabric roses as a fun small present, but the only instructions I could find were somewhat fuzzy on the details. This is obviously not rocket science, but I thought I just might as well share some tips! This is my first instructable, so let me know what you think...

Step 1: Tools and materials

I used a fairly thick wire, because that's what I had lying around. The rose is not that heavy, but you do want the stem to have at least some thickness, so I wouldn't use too small a gauge.

Green florist's tape.

This is some kind of rubbery stretchy green tape, you can probably get it at any florist. You need about 30 cm per rose.

gluegun+glue

scissors

somewhere to work where you can spill glue

The only things I bought for the roses were the florist's tape and the ribbon. I can't remember exact prices, but I think it came out to about one or two euro per rose, so not that expensive.

Step 2: Sewing

Luckily this doesn't have to be very neat! Get a piece of thread about as long as the piece of ribbon. Just loop around the end a couple of times to make a start (see the pic), then stitch very close to the one side. If you're done, hold the thread at the end with one hand, and push the ribbon back with the other hand, so that it bunches up. I found out you have to bunch it up quite a bit to get nice roses, otherwise the fabric is just gonna wrap around flat instead of standing apart. If you think you've bunched it up the right amount, finish the same way as you started. Since the sown part will be glued to the wire anyway, this simple way to fix the beginning and the end is good enough.

I made some of these for two of my friends who were born on the same day, in the hospital, and have the same middle name: "rose". I had some green felt lying around so I decided to add a leaf, they turned out perfectly!

Click on the thumbnail to see it as large as the main image on the page. If you want to see the image even larger, you can click on the small "i" in the top left corner, that takes you to a page with a link to the original image. hope that helps? :)